Kage Baker never really worried about her eyesight.

She was slightly near-sighted but not enough to wear glasses most of her life. She was, as a baby, reputedly as cross-eyed as a Siamese kitten (and undoubtedly as cranky – it must have been cute). Due to the corrective procedure being somewhat mishandled, she was then slightly wall-eyed for the subsequent rest of her life – but her vision adapted and she was a dead-eye shot, shooting; and she didn’t need bifocals ever in her life.

I, however, have been a victim of my eyes since birth. They are primarily decorative, possibly put on my face as markers for the placement of my nose – they’ve never contributed much to the sense of sight, and I suspect I actually have sonar-sensitive patches on my forehead. Kage used to say that was why I was such a soprano – I steered by sound. It didn’t work well.

Today, though, I went in for the second of my two cataract surgeries. It went easily and quickly, and I am assured all will be well in a day or two. Tonight, though, I am down to one eye (the left), the right being hidden under a plastic tea strainer for the next 24 hours. I have NO depth perception – when I tried to get myself a cup of coffee, I missed the cup with the milk, and then missed the shelf in the fridge with the carton, thus first pouring milk into the stove and then dropping a half-gallon of it on my foot … and, a pint being a pound the world round, as the saying goes, that was no fun at all.

So now I am begging family members to bring me drinks, and using a grownup sippy-cup with a lid and a straw. It doesn’t stop me from bouncing off the door jambs, but I stay dryer ….

However, I am pleased to report that my effort to reproduce Coke Blak is a great success! I have found that a straight 1 to 1 ratio is most effective, with NO cream added: Coca Cola will sour dairy products. But Coke Free and black Mullah’s coffee – a strong drip brew – works most deliciously. So, while I cannot see, I am well hydrated and happy.

Tomorrow, Dear Readers, I hope to return to the Land of the Moderately Sighted. Now I’m gonna go sip my exotic Coke and coffee cocktail – which resembles Guinness most fetchingly – and listen to some television. This blog has about used up my abilities at sonar and telekinesis.